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Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Quest for the historical Licona

Over at veracityhill.com, Kurt Jaros is initiating a series in which he attempts to rebut the alleged misrepresentations of Michael Licona by the McGrew clan. Unfortunately, Kurt is operating with a woodenly literal ipsissima verba paradigm of the historical Licona. But what if the McGrews actually operate with an ipsissima vox paradigm, in the exemplary tradition of Thucydides? Indeed, a "broad view" of ipsissima vox?

Unfortunately, Kurt's allegations suffer from a flat reading of the McGrews. He's failed to make due allowance for narrative art, narrative plot, and the McGrewian sense of irony. Their analysis of the historical Licona is not a misunderstanding or misrepresentation, but a dynamic equivalent transmogrification, so that even if they don't look at all alike, yet beneath the surface, at a deeper level, they bear almost exactly the same meaning.

I'm not going to get into the meta with Kurt, and since his post is all meta, I'm not going to go there. I mentioned him at all in public only reluctantly and only once and only because Mike insisted on dragging him in.

It's very unprofessional for any scholar to send someone else out as a proxy to debate for him. How would the opponent even know whom he was debating or precisely what position he was countering? Is it the original scholar's position or some unknown variant thereof held by the proxy? I wouldn't dream of such a thing, nor would I ever dream of suggesting such a thing to someone else. For this and for the types of reasons I stated in the post in which I responded to the initial suggestion, I have no intention of (in Blake's words) mauling Kurt Jaros. He can go his way in peace.